When working with CFA students in my CFA tutoring in London, what I often find is that practices to calm the mind can really help with the study process.
A powerful process is the process of gratitude which financiers are often challenged at being able to do.
Gratitude is about being thankful for what you have in life. That can be new things but also old things that already have. The value of gratitude is that it calms down the feeling of lack. If you are lacking you may be incredibly motivated to do something, and that is often the case with finance people, but because it is driven by fear it can be harmful for mental and ultimately physical health. It also means that you do not respect your mind when it says its time to stop.
So when you are genuinely grateful, you can feel that you are doing what are you doing more out of choice or job than a weak need to overcome your sense of lack.
And while the lack may feel it is coming from the world, actually it is coming from inside. The lack can take many forms – I am not good enough, I am not strong enough, I don’t have the capacity. All of these and more are beliefs set in childhood as a quick reaction to some negative situations and then, because the belief was useful in that situation (maybe even helped you escape death) then the belief stops being a useful tool and now becomes a limiting concept.
So the path to gratitude often leads to overcoming some deep inner limits, which I find with students as a cfa tutor.
Sometimes people want to keep these inner limits because they drive them forward. They may help create outer success but by reinforcing the internal pain they never allow the outer success to lead to the inner success that it was intended to.
The conscious bank will have staff who have gratitude of this sort so they perform at the highest level in a healthy manner.
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